Competent and good are not synonyms. Smart and good are not synonyms. Evil and competent are not synonyms. Virtues are not all moral virtues. Bravery is a morally neutral virtue. It makes bad people worse, and good people better and without it all virtues and vices are nearly meaningless. Competence is morally neutral. It is […]

I’m back but still pretty busy. Not a lot of time to unpack what’s really going on here so I’ll try to make this brief.

Here’s my take on both parties’ health care policies/bills:

Republicans= Sharp stick in the eye

Democrats= Better than a sharp stick in the eye

I’m both amused and frustrated at the way party loyalists sing the praises of Obamacare. It’s NOT all that. Basically, we are all at the mercy of a private insurance market and medical care industry that has zero incentive to keep costs down. All we got out of Obamacare is the right to pay for outrageously expensive insurance if we have a pre-existing condition. Oh, sure, there will be subsidies and tax credits and more medicaid in some states but I figure it will be like getting one of those coupons where the bargain is only marginally better than paying retail and has fine print that says “cannot be combined with any other offer”.

I look at Obamacare and then look at my 10 year old beat up car and realize that I will have to give up getting a new car to pay for the health insurance that I still have to foot the bill for. A lot of people will be making this mental calculation in the next couple of months. I think it *will* have an effect on the bottom line. There is only so much you can squeeze out of people who have vastly reduced or stagnant wages. Math will get us all in the end.

Nevertheless, it is the law. It was cobbled together by industry lobbyists, watered down by Republicans, made all but useless by committees and obstructionists and hyper-religious nutcases who would easily agree to condemning a whole generation of Americans to the brink of poverty in order to romanticize the fetus, then voted on by both houses of Congress and signed by the president as his “signature accomplishment”. He and his party are like gleeful children coming home from school with shiny stars on their chicken scratching artwork, insisting that we stick it on the refrigerator door forever.

But the Republicans have to shut down government over this meh bill because they are part of a cult and their followers are part of a cult. I honestly believe this because I lived it when I was a kid. The leaders know what they’re doing. Ok, maybe they let it go a little farther than they intended to this time. But the followers really don’t have a clue. All they know is that the right wing noise machine and its spokesman gives them permission to entertain their secret desires. Every time they get crazy and get away with it, they get validation that they’re right and good.

I’m reading the new book on Manson right now and I can’t help but see parallels in the way Manson brought forth what was within his followers and gave them permission to do whatever it was they felt like at the moment. They lived in the now because the world was going to end soon and they would live through it by hiding in a hole in the ground in the desert. When the dust settled, they would live as evolved beings in a paradise where they would rule forever. So, what did it matter what they did in the present, especially if it accelerated the end of times? Anything goes.

That was Susan Atkins’ philosophy when Sharon Tate begged for her life. Atkins told Tate she had no mercy for her. Michelle Bachman’s comments about shutting down the government last night has that familiar ring:

“We’re very excited,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). “It’s exactly what we wanted, and we got it.”[…]

Lovely. So much for Michelle’s mercy for the thousands and thousands of people who will be furloughed this week.

And there will be millions of people glued to Fox and right wing talk radio today where their reality will be shaped. They will be in the world but not a part of it. Their reality is not that of the 800,000 people whose livelihoods will be put on pause so Michelle Bachman can be excited.

It is time to face it that half the country is in the grips of a very powerful cult. That’s not to say that Democrats wouldn’t use some lessons from the gurus to get what they want, like they did in 2008. But for the most part, it is the Republican base that is following the leaders off a cliff.

You forgot to say, you have to lose you right to upgrade your car so you can buy a plan that has the provider network of Medicaid.

Exchange plans are very, very skinny plans. Lots of “coverage”. Crap doctors. Same price as the old plans before subsidies. Hope like heck that you get subsidies or the net effect is a huge, huge loss.

The Malefactors of Great Wealth are not monolithic. I suspect that a majority of them–the ones who fund the Dinocrats–realize they can’t deny us peasants health care altogether and indefinitely, so they have decided to settle for a scheme which remains friendly to plutocracy, hoping to pacify us with crumbs from the table, which is all Obummercare is.

The Reptilians are funded by the minority of the MOGW (think Koch brothers, for example) who still believe they CAN get away with Full Metal Neo-Feudalism indefinitely.

The Democrats in the senate have shut down the government to keep themselves and their staff out of ObamaCare. Harry Reid says it would be “punishment”. That should tell you everything you need to know about it.

I firmly believe the gov’t knows exactly how many days they will be shut down and that this was planned. They had way too much time to work through any “differences” and they chose to just doddle along waiting for the end of the budget period so they could make it look like they had no choice but to screw the people so they could get back to work.

I’m going to boycott the big corporations 30 days for every 1 day the gov’t is shut down. If we are going to go for the root cause on this, we have to put our focus on getting the money back from the 1% who are scooping it up and hoarding it.

I saw the rubber ducky! I have some video clip of walking to the Point last Saturday. Brook was on Hometown High Q at KDKA so I made her go see the duck. Too cool.
This place is crazy this week with the Pirates post-season games. Everyone wearing Pirates shirts and hats. Very exciting. Wish I could get tickets.😦

RD:
Always right on the money!
Yes, pun intended…it’s all about money. More for the 1% and less for the masses.
Obamacare is not the answer to the health care problem in USA,
but the republicans’ farcical circus on this shutdown is neither.

In many of the developed countries health care is a “social service” and the reason for a single payer system. ie: both of our next door neighbors, Canada and Mexico.
Here in the USA is nothing but a big buck business= money$$$$

Of course it’s about the money…EVERYTHING in this country is about the money. The worst part is that the government is really no longer trying to hide their thieving intentions. They lie, they backtrack, and they don’t care when they get caught. We have until the 15th when the threat is we will nose dive into a worse depression than the Great one, so the thugs are saying they will be shut down at least until the 17th. That didn’t seem to get panic in the streets, so now JP Morgan is about to crash. THE SKY IS FALLING.

Can someone confirm for me the vast concerns over pre-existing conditions? I’m so confused, and am thinking that it differs widely between states. The only time anyone thinks about pre-existing conditions in WA State is if they have had a lapse in coverage and are dealing with an on-going or already diagnosed condition. Then when they get new coverage a 6 month waiting period takes effect for only that condition. That lapse rule is to prevent people from buying insurance only because they are ill and then cancelling it as soon as they are better. Is this the same across states?

Body: Last week I went down to Washington, D.C. to deliver a paper at a conference in the technical field where I worked, ten years or so and two or three careers ago, before the dot.com trash. The trip was solely an exercise in merit-making, since I doubt very much I'll get work in the field, but reconnecting with old friends was really great -- even […]

"Barrett Brown has been released from prison; WikiLeaks publishes to celebrate: Today, investigative journalist Barrett Brown has been released from FCI Three Rivers to a halfway house outside Dallas, earlier than initially scheduled. His parents picked him up from the federal prison to drive him six hours to his new residence. Brown's release come […]